Wayne Freeman
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- Oct 28, 2018
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For the past couple of years, I've been brewing Fontana kits, either Malbec or Pinot, and Chardonnay. The only tweaking I do is oaking, both in primary and after stabilizing.
I try to keep it simple for these wines for a couple of reasons. They are our everyday table wines, and I want to keep the cost down. Our expectations are not very high and mainly want something quaffable, rather than try to turn them into something they're not. We lived for a while in rural Italy and sort of developed a reverse-wine-snob attitude. Allow me to explain.
Most people in rural Italy (at least the ones we associated with), if they didn't have their own vines, just bought their wine from the contadino up the road, for 3 or 4 euro for a 3-liter jug. Or, they went to the nearest winery with a 30-liter fiasco or carboy or fustino (more about that later) and filled up. This was generally not wine that would be bought in a store or exported. They rarely bought something like a Brunello di Montalcino for their own consumption. That was for exporting, tourists, or special occasions. I'm not talking about poor people, either. Our host one time brought out a bottle of Gato Negro Cabernet and was pleased to inform me it was from Chile.
Family-run pizzerias often will serve their own wines, or the wine they bought in bulk at a local winery, from he afore-mentioned fustino sitting on the counter. The fustino is a stainless-steel wine container (also used for bulk storage of olive oil). These can range in size from 5 liters on up to hundreds of liters in the wineries. Typical pizzeria and home size is 30 liters.
Having observed all this, we started drinking wine like the locals and would usually order a half-liter with lunch or a liter of vino della casa with dinner, almost never a bottle.
After returning home, I resolved to replicate the custom in my own winemaking and consumption. Enter the fustino.
The typical home-size or 30-liter fustino has a spigot at the bottom (of course), a loose lid that covers the top, and most importantly, an inner lid that floats on top of the wine, with about 1/4" gap around the edge. After filling the fustino and inserting the floating inner lid, typically you float a bead of olive oil in the gap between the inner lid and the outer wall of the fustino to seal out the oxygen.
These fustini are fairly expensive, even in Italy, because they're big stainless steel things. They're even more expensive after they're imported here, and I haven't seen very many of them. I was fortunate enough to stumble into a homebrew store in Capitola, CA in 2002 or so that specialized in beer, not wine, and I asked what it was used for (I already knew, of course, but also knew that it was out of place in a home-beer-brewing store). The proprietor gave me an explanation that indicated to me that he really had no idea what he had there and he quoted me a steal of a price because it had been sitting around for a long time gathering dust, so I snapped it up and have been using it ever since.
So, with all of that as background, here's how I make it easy on myself with my inexpensive everyday wines:
As I said before, the only tweak I use to improve the wine itself is to add some oak. Simplicity is the key. After the wine is stabilized and degassed, the last step is to siphon the wine into bulk storage, not bottling.
For the red, it goes into the fustino. At that point, I part ways with the traditional olive-oil-inner-lid-sealing method. I put some baking soda in a small plastic cup and set it on the floating inner lid, then pour a little bit of vinegar into it. This releases a lot of CO2, which, being heavier than air, keeps the oxygen away enough to prevent spoilage while we're busily consuming the contents, which usually takes 2-3 months. The fact that there's only a small border around the floating inner lid that's exposed to the air helps prevent spoilage, too.
For the white, I just bag it in those mylar bags associated with one of those Wine-on-Tap thingies.
There's something very satisfying about going down to the wine cellar and drawing a carafe full of your own wine to enjoy at dinner time.
I try to keep it simple for these wines for a couple of reasons. They are our everyday table wines, and I want to keep the cost down. Our expectations are not very high and mainly want something quaffable, rather than try to turn them into something they're not. We lived for a while in rural Italy and sort of developed a reverse-wine-snob attitude. Allow me to explain.
Most people in rural Italy (at least the ones we associated with), if they didn't have their own vines, just bought their wine from the contadino up the road, for 3 or 4 euro for a 3-liter jug. Or, they went to the nearest winery with a 30-liter fiasco or carboy or fustino (more about that later) and filled up. This was generally not wine that would be bought in a store or exported. They rarely bought something like a Brunello di Montalcino for their own consumption. That was for exporting, tourists, or special occasions. I'm not talking about poor people, either. Our host one time brought out a bottle of Gato Negro Cabernet and was pleased to inform me it was from Chile.
Family-run pizzerias often will serve their own wines, or the wine they bought in bulk at a local winery, from he afore-mentioned fustino sitting on the counter. The fustino is a stainless-steel wine container (also used for bulk storage of olive oil). These can range in size from 5 liters on up to hundreds of liters in the wineries. Typical pizzeria and home size is 30 liters.
Having observed all this, we started drinking wine like the locals and would usually order a half-liter with lunch or a liter of vino della casa with dinner, almost never a bottle.
After returning home, I resolved to replicate the custom in my own winemaking and consumption. Enter the fustino.
The typical home-size or 30-liter fustino has a spigot at the bottom (of course), a loose lid that covers the top, and most importantly, an inner lid that floats on top of the wine, with about 1/4" gap around the edge. After filling the fustino and inserting the floating inner lid, typically you float a bead of olive oil in the gap between the inner lid and the outer wall of the fustino to seal out the oxygen.
These fustini are fairly expensive, even in Italy, because they're big stainless steel things. They're even more expensive after they're imported here, and I haven't seen very many of them. I was fortunate enough to stumble into a homebrew store in Capitola, CA in 2002 or so that specialized in beer, not wine, and I asked what it was used for (I already knew, of course, but also knew that it was out of place in a home-beer-brewing store). The proprietor gave me an explanation that indicated to me that he really had no idea what he had there and he quoted me a steal of a price because it had been sitting around for a long time gathering dust, so I snapped it up and have been using it ever since.
So, with all of that as background, here's how I make it easy on myself with my inexpensive everyday wines:
As I said before, the only tweak I use to improve the wine itself is to add some oak. Simplicity is the key. After the wine is stabilized and degassed, the last step is to siphon the wine into bulk storage, not bottling.
For the red, it goes into the fustino. At that point, I part ways with the traditional olive-oil-inner-lid-sealing method. I put some baking soda in a small plastic cup and set it on the floating inner lid, then pour a little bit of vinegar into it. This releases a lot of CO2, which, being heavier than air, keeps the oxygen away enough to prevent spoilage while we're busily consuming the contents, which usually takes 2-3 months. The fact that there's only a small border around the floating inner lid that's exposed to the air helps prevent spoilage, too.
For the white, I just bag it in those mylar bags associated with one of those Wine-on-Tap thingies.
There's something very satisfying about going down to the wine cellar and drawing a carafe full of your own wine to enjoy at dinner time.
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